Full Circle
by Lizwontcry
Summary: Sara reflects on Grissom's question. Spoilers for 8x04!


**Disclaimer: checks Nope, still don't own anything related to the characters, sadly enough.****  
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**A/N - I REALLY should be working on my AU fic (The One That Got Away! Read it, it's good!), but after watching THE SCENE about 15 times, I couldn't help myself. Our geeks are engaged, y'all, and that's something worth writing about. It's short, probably the shortest fic I've ever written, but I like it and I hope you do, too.**

Sara wondered if he actually expected her to say no to that question.

After all they'd been through, and to think that the answer would be anything but YES YES YES. Of course she was going to say yes, what the hell else was she going to say?

Everyone has their own vices, their own set of problems they try but fail to hide from the world. Warrick's used to be gambling, Nick liked the ladies, Catherine had a habit of getting a little too involved in, well, everything. And only Sara knew Greg's vice--he was a smoker. He tried so hard to hide it from everyone, but occasionally, when there was no chance of either of them getting caught, they'd go outside and share a cigarette.

Sara's vice? Some might argue it was work, that she never got enough of working. But she knew her true vice, the one thing that never failed to make her weak in the knees. Her vice was Gil Grissom, and to think that he even had to ask her that question, and to ask it with a charming kind of insecurity in his voice, was amazing to her.

Everybody knew Sara was not some small, fragile flower. Growing up in the foster care system taught her a few things about taking care of herself and her business, and defending those things if it came down to it. Sara Sidle knew who she was, and she didn't need some man to confuse her. But that was before the Forensics Academy Conference. That was before she watched a very charismatic and passionate man talk about bugs for 3 hours straight and somehow make it interesting and insightful. He came into her life, and he loved bugs, and he proposed to her when they were discussing Colony Collapse Disorder, and she couldn't imagine ever loving anybody as much as she loved this crazy entomologist.

She thought back to something he said many years ago, another lifetime almost, when she was participating in what she would later call her "social experiment," that being the relationship with Hank. Grissom paged her while she was at a forensic anthropology seminar, and she had to leave in the middle of it to go to a crime scene. It wasn't that she didn't want to leave; the seminar was godawful boring. But it annoyed her that he always seemed to want her to drop everything whenever he needed something, and yet he was never emotionally available to her when she needed it most.

When she reached the crime scene that day, she told him how she wasn't too pleased about leaving the seminar, and he shot back with how everybody seemed to be busy, but he had a dead teenager and nobody to help process the body.

"I need you," he'd said.

And she smiled, and tried not to smile but just kept smiling, and finally said, "How can I help?" He lifted the crime scene tape and there she was in his world once again.

After he proposed, she thought about that day. At the time, she shouldn't have taken it so personally, she should have known that sometimes he said things he had no idea would have any kind of effect on her. Of course he'd meant that he needed her to help with the crime scene, and she really did know that. But him saying that he needed her sent her into some ridiculous kind of panic mode and made her question everything she knew about anything she ever knew. She hadn't been in such a panic since he told her he'd been interested in beauty "since I met you." Sometimes she thought he did it on purpose. Sometimes she thought he said these things just when it seemed like she was moving on with her life; just when she'd given up and let go. Which, well, she had been on the verge of doing. Hank was nice and they had fun together, and she liked him. She just didn't know if she could ever love him. He never made her feel a shred of what she felt when Grissom said he needed her, and that made her sad in a very tangible way.

So when he said, "You know, maybe we should get married," it sent her into a quiet panic. The bee on her hand even figured out she was panicking because it stung her, which hurt like hell but not as much as if he was just talking out of his butt again. In her heart, she knew things were different from that day nearly 5 and a half years ago when he said he needed her. She knew they'd been through so much since then and came out the better for it. 2 years ago, they left the hospital together after watching their best friend go through hell. They hadn't even made it back to either of their respective houses; instead choosing the backseat of the Tahoe as the spot where they finally consummated their tangled relationship.

So when he scraped the stinger out of her hand, she wondered for half a second if he knew what he was saying. Did he say it because he was happy that she was with him in his element? Did he say it because she took her glove off to let a bee explore her hand? Did he say it because nearly a month ago she almost died? Did he say it just to get her reaction, and it was more of a hypothetical and/or rhetorical question? The sad thing was, she wouldn't put it past him.

Her question was answered when he scraped the stinger out and said, "So, what do you think, you know, about..." she was so relieved he wasn't giving up on the question, she bent down to look him in the eye and said, "Yes. Let's do it." She would have loved to feel his lips on hers, but their bee helmets got in the way. They made up for it later, though, and there was a lot more than kissing involved. "I need you," he told her in the middle of the more than kissing. "I want you, and I need you." And she smiled to herself as she thought about how they'd come full circle.


End file.
